Butterflies for a change! Colour & Inspiration Tuesday

A little bit of Outback Autumn to brighten your day, and some quilt progress at last!

There is a sense that nature is stirring around us here at Arkaroola…. The heat is tailing off with the arrival of autumn, and some of the benefits from the rain two months ago remain. In particular, flowers that germinated and butterflies that bred in response to the rain in February are now reaching maturity. More birds are appearing around our house area now too, especially the bug-eating Willy Wagtails and some finches.

And the nightly moth cabaret at our windows never plays the same show twice. Checking on the visitors at the windows each night has become somewhat of a hobby for me…. a shared interest with the Chameleon, if you like. Although I must add, our motivations are a little divergent….. I am more “Team Moth” than “Team Lizard”. Notably, my team does not always win.

Been a bit AWOL from the blog, but still plugging along

Many thanks to those caring souls who have checked in lately. For the last few weeks I feel like I have had writer’s block, creative block… all sorts of blocks. Life was too hectic, and then the school term finished early with not much notice. All the things I hate so much (like alarm clocks and fighting over year 4 grammar) went away really suddenly. Yay! But so did my schedule. Boo! So much more time and so much less motivation….. I’m sure many of you can relate. If not, you are likely one of the essential role darlings (thank you) whom the rest of us bunnies wish we could do more to help than just stay out of your way.

Anyway, whether you are staying at home or are working flat out, I hope you managed to have some happy moments over Easter. I can’t remember the last Easter when I didn’t see my brother and his family, but it was OK. In fact, Easter was somehow a turning point for me…. I don’t know if it was the egg hunt with the kids, the bonfire in the evening, or a chocolate overload, but on Sunday I suddenly emerged from the low grade mental fog that’s been slowing me up lately. My enthusiasm is back and the circus will go on. Ha!

I have finally got back into my sewing space after just not feeling like it for so long. I have even made some significant progress on my Chinese New Year quilt….. what a ridiculous subject for a quilt that has turned out to be for the moment, bahahaha. The Chameleon has just about wet himself laughing a few times over the notion of celebrating 2020 so far. But I am committed, and perhaps many good things will still come out of the Year of the Rat yet. A year of reflection and change and (re)-discovering our strengths, maybe. Or maybe it will just be a case of “I survived the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt quilt”….

At least we’ll get the quilt! 😀

Fresh off the SD card…. my recent non-quilting adventures

Now that school is in recess and the weather is cooling off (sometimes), my kids have at least been more keen to get outside and explore more. Our house is nestled in between several hills, and my son especially likes to take me hiking. I’ve been dragged up this hill a few times now, the top is about 100m higher than our home altitude, so it’s a fair bit of exercise.

The view from the top is pretty good though. Here you can see Arkaroola Village (cluster of buildings furthest away), our house (the single building in the centre of the picture) and the caravan park buildings (to the left).

You can see where the creek beds are around Arkaroola by the change in vegetation colour. It’s been very marked since the rain in February.

On a clear day you can also see one of the great salt lakes in the very distance from the very top of this hill. We didn’t actually go right to the top on this occasion.

This time we only went as far as the Mulla Mulla flower patch on the last saddle, because it was too hot to be bothered with the last piece of the climb. And I specifically wanted to get a picture of these native flowers to show you, as they are the most showy flowers currently on offer here.

We also saw bush bananas, a very cool grasshopper and lots of butterflies.

Excitement is a flu jab

One of the novelties we experienced this past week is a visit from the Flying Doctor (RFDS). The RFDS runs lots of clinics as well as emergency services, and this week there were flu jabs on offer. So off we all went to Balcanoona Airstrip. The weather was pleasant, so the nurses simply put chairs in the shade of the plane and we had our vaccinations on the tarmac.

I actually don’t know what happens to the clinic if the weather is wet, as there are no buildings at the airstrip, just a shade structure. Perhaps the clinic is postponed. Or perhaps when there isn’t a pandemic, the plane doubles as a consulting room. I’ll have to ask the locals.

And speaking of locals…..

The last few days I have got back into some weed management around our house, and my early morning work today was rewarded with a sighting of our elusive Euros (a stocky species of kangaroo). Here’s the mostly grown joey, turning on the charm. Awwww!

And finally, some progress on the Lunarcy quilt

Once it got too hot for weeding today, I worked on the Lunarcy Chinese New Year quilt. I finally have something to show! As of today, I have all twelve zodiac animals fused down, as well as the light-coloured parts of the lanterns. Getting the animals into position did take quite a bit longer than I expected….. it wasn’t hard, just fiddly. And of course, I ended up with several branches that I somehow traced back-to-front and had to replace. Don’t quite know how I managed that…. I thought I’d been quite careful with the orientations! Never mind.

Now for the rest of the lantern parts and lots and lots of spring blossoms! It’a a bit hard to make flowers back-to-front, so it should all be good from here on (famous last words….).

It’s been a while…..

The Chameleon’s been all dressed up with nowhere to go while I’ve been slacking off… and he’s a bit annoyed with me. So, we’d better back up a little and feature some gems from the last time we partied.

Who can resist googly eyes?! Not the Chameleon, that’s for sure!!! Brenda of Songbird Designs linked up her brilliant version of “I’m not the black sheep of the family” quilt for a bog hop called Quilt Qwazy Queens Blog Hop, designed to make you laugh. And giggle we did. If you are currently in need of a laugh, head to Brenda’s post and follow the links back to the original thread.

Funnily enough, the Chameleon’s never been accused of being the black sheep either……

And the other (googly) eye-catching character at our most recent party was Andrée’s Le petit oiseau de toutes les couleurs… This was an art quilt made as a response to a Project Quilting challenge. Andrée’s bird is a darling….. bright and cheerful, and of course our diva chameleon’s got his feathers a bit ruffled over the admiration it’s getting. Clever’s been muttering “Le caméléon intelligent de toutes les couleurs” to himself ever since for some reason…… Head over to the Quilting and Learning blog to find out more about Andrée’s fun art quilt project and ignore the cranky lizard.

Time to Paaar-tay

But before you go, join this week’s party. Since there’s been a couple of weeks without party linkups, feel free to back date several entries if you wish.

Tell us – what are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? We want to know so we can visit and be inspired. Link up a blog post, an IG post or simply a photo from your computer.  See if you can get the Chameleon to turn quilted with happiness. We’d love to see your quilting colours!

• Link up your latest or recent quilt/sewing excitement. All quilt construction stages welcome – finished quilts, quilt blocks – even fabric pulls! Or inspiration sources!
• You have 50 characters in the link description…. tell us who you are and what your fantastic project is.
• URL links are not necessary to link up…. non-bloggers 100% welcome! If you don’t have a URL, you can link up with just a photo.
• Take a moment to visit some friends who came to the party – leave a little love and make their day. And a link back to Clever Chameleon is always appreciated.
• Do it now……. before you forget!

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The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!

Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest, IG or FB. All your follow options can be found here. Don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour & Inspiration Linky parties!